This is a strange novel from the writer of Learwife, which was also pretty odd! The narrator, Anne, is a translator working in some nameless and increasingly authoritarian state where she has found herself translating texts which the government does not like. In twenty-four hours she will be arrested and her future does not look good!

Her offence has been to translate the letters of a political activist called Pytheas which have suddenly come to represent resistance to the authoritarian state. His crime is to act as a courier helping refugees across the mountains. She knows him as Tomas and has frequently bailed him from prison while also getting his letters published. Things do not look good!

There are some odd things about this book. Because Anne is a translator there are constant references to other languages and grammatical terminology as if being a translator automatically makes you an outsider wherever you are. Also, the style of writing mixes recount with direct speech and sideways references so you never quite know what's going on, or what is being talked about. It's possibly auto fiction! Finally, because we are in an authoritarian state, people speak obliquely rather than say what they mean and that's another level of confusion.

Is it any good? Oddly, it is a fascinating read and an insight into the workings of a state which seeks almost total control over the individual. If it has a weakness it is that the revolutionary writings of Pytheas are really pretty banal but maybe the point is that the totalitarian state picks easy targets.